All six players whirled. Mouse immediately shot Brittany a look.

She put her hands up and shrugged. Realizing, Mouse frowned at himself. There’s no way she could’ve done anything. I was here with her the whole time.

Clarita took off toward the screams. A second later, Mouse chased after her, sprinting over the sand, a cloud of sand flying after him. Behind them, Brittany and Spar gave chase.

The beach curved ahead, the white sand strewn with rocks as the earth rose beyond it, rising into a cliff. The cliff curved in on itself to create a little cove. Mouse, Brittany, and Spar pulled ahead from the rest of the group and rounded the corner first.

The mermaid princess laid beached on the shore. At first glance, her red-splotched tail made Mouse’s heart catch, but on the second look, it was the natural color of her scales.

Spar came to her side first. He lifted her gently. Brittany caught up next, then Mouse, panting, his legs aching. Damn, I really need to exercise more. Getting locked in bed is no joke.

He crouched beside her as Spar tipped her head to the side. Her hair fell back to reveal thin gills, and just below them, a stream of red blood dripping down her neck from two tiny puncture wounds.

Spar and Mouse turned to look at Brittany.

Brittany threw her hands up. “When would I have accomplished that? Guys, please.”

Mouse sighed. “You’re right, you’re right.”

The mermaid princess twitched in Spar’s arms. “Wa… water.”

Mouse touched her face with the back of his hand. Damp, but barely. “Let’s get her back into the sea. We can ask what happened later.”

He bent to scoop her up. His arms burned and his back strained, but nothing happened. She’s heavy!

“Ah, leave it to me.” Spar lifted the princess effortlessly. Her tail spilled out of his grip, lacy red fringe tracing the ground despite his height.

Mouse watched them go silently. If she stood on the tip of her tail, she might be taller than Spar. There’s no shame in being unable to lift someone that big. With that much height comes requisite weight. Yep, not embarrassing at all.

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Brittany snorted. A hand over her mouth, she glanced at Mouse out of the corners of her eyes. “So weak.”

“Oh, shut up,” Mouse grumbled.

“That’s not very princessly of you.”

“Hello, pot. I’m kettle.”

Clarita caught up at last. She bent over, hands on her knees, and sucked in air, then looked up at them. “What was it?”

“She was beached and bitten,” Brittany summarized.

Clarita narrowed her eyes at Brittany. “You—”

“I was with you the whole time! You guys really need to stop suspecting me over everything. Just because I’m a vampire, doesn’t mean I’ll bite just anyone!”

“You were biting just anyone until recently,” Mouse pointed out.

“Not ‘just anyone,’” Brittany complained.

“Oh? And what was your differentiator?” Clarita asked sharply, a dangerous note in her voice.

“Only the cute ones,” Brittany grinned.

Clarita narrowed her eyes. “If there’s so many cute women out there, why obsess over me?”

Brittany opened her mouth, then paused. Her brows furrowed.

“Er, excuse me, but, um… can we focus on the situation here? Someone else is biting women, and we have no idea who or why,” Mouse interrupted.

“Did they bite to turn?” Spar asked, returned from the ocean. The mermaid princess vanished into the depths with a flick of her tail, apparently revived by the water.

Mouse and Clarita looked at Brittany.

Brittany put a hand on her chin. “Hmm… didn’t look like it. You have to drain most of the blood for that, and her skin was still peachy and healthy.”

“So they aren’t building an army or trying to recruit foreign princesses to their aid,” Spar deduced.

Brittany waved her hand. “I’d sense it if they were, anyways. Higher-order vampires can sense when their underlings are adding to their families, and all the vampires here are blooded under me.”

“Can you sense when they bite?” Mouse asked.

“No. Any high-order vampire would go mad if they could sense every time their underlings bit someone. We have to eat, after all, and most of us have hundreds of underlings. Oh—I should add, I can only tell when someone’s making underlings, not who or where. Before you beating-heart folks get any funny ideas. It has to do with blood spreading and… well, it’s complicated, but trust me, it’s very specific and not particularly useful. Took us half a year the last time a traitor decided to thin out her blood to stage a coup, but then, that was an oddity who was blooded directly under the king, and everyone is blooded under the king. Let her blend in for longer than she should’ve been able to.”

“Blooded?” Mouse tipped his head.

“It’s a ritual… you take the blood of the higher-order vampire and pledge yourself to them. Complicated, not really important. Don’t worry about it.”

“Huh. Are the other undead—the zombies and such—blooded, too?”

Brittany shook her head. “Only the vampires. It’s not possible to blood anyone but a vampire. All the undead nobility and royalty are vampires, and the other undead are under them… very stratified. Not totally unlike certain elements of human society, really.”

Clarita cleared her throat. A playful light in her eye, she interjected, “Excuse me, but could we focus on the situation here? You can quiz her about vampire biology later.”

Mouse chuckled. He put his hands up. “Fair enough, fair enough.”